Dropbox CEO Says Employees Appreciate Remote Work More Than Cushy Office Perks (businessinsider.com) 149
Dropbox cofounder and CEO Drew Houston said he views his employees like customers, and that means giving them what they want -- which isn't in-person work. From a report: "We will support however they want to gather," Houston said in a new interview with The Verge. "But we're finding that these retreats and off-sites and things like that are often a lot more effective than asking people to commute." Houston said other business leaders are making the wrong move by forcing employees back to the office. Many companies are pushing employees to return to office in a hybrid structure, including giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon.
"They keep mashing the go back to 2019 button, and they see it's not working," Houston said in the interview, speaking generally about return-to-office mandates. "Then they just push harder, and then you have this really toxic relationship." He compared returning to the office to returning to movie theaters or malls. It may have been cool for a time and people might still occasionally want to watch a big movie like "Top Gun" at the cinema, he said, "but the world has moved on." The CEO said the reason it used to be so easy to get people to the office was because they didn't have a choice. A lot of CEOs today don't understand that flexibility wasn't an option in the past, Houston said.
"They keep mashing the go back to 2019 button, and they see it's not working," Houston said in the interview, speaking generally about return-to-office mandates. "Then they just push harder, and then you have this really toxic relationship." He compared returning to the office to returning to movie theaters or malls. It may have been cool for a time and people might still occasionally want to watch a big movie like "Top Gun" at the cinema, he said, "but the world has moved on." The CEO said the reason it used to be so easy to get people to the office was because they didn't have a choice. A lot of CEOs today don't understand that flexibility wasn't an option in the past, Houston said.
I like hybrid environments (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I like hybrid environments (Score:4, Insightful)
The ratio probably changes a lot depending on the industry/company. Where I worked during the pandemic, I'd say that at least 50% of employees were as effective or more effective working remotely compared to being at the office. The people who were less effective were my coworkers who were already ineffective to begin with. My coworkers who spent most of their time managing expectations and making excuses, went from doing little to doing next-to-nothing.
Re: I like hybrid environments (Score:3)
Um. No. My stakeholders are all remote, no matter whether I'm in an office building or at home in my office.
No sense fighting traffic for 45 minutes each way to get on glorified Zoom calls all day.
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There are indeed times when it makes sense to sit down with your colleagues to work things out. At the beginning of a project and maybe once a week for a milestone meeting, it can be useful to have each other there in person. Yes, even I, a person who considers human contact despicable during the best times, can see that benefit.
But outside those about 2 hours a week, please let me do some meaningful work. Don't waste my time in pointless meetings where all I can do is to undress the intern while the narcis
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Indeed. Now, I do a lot of teaching and quite frankly, that works better in person for most students. For meetings, occasionally you have to meet the people in person if possible with reasonable effort. It helps. But just work in an office? Why would I ever do that?
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But outside those about 2 hours a week, please let me do some meaningful work. Don't waste my time in pointless meetings where all I can do is to undress the intern while the narcissist drones on about how awesome he is.
Don't you just love those meetings that could have been resolved by email?
I still remember at a small company our COO told us that if you are asked to come to a meeting and within the first 10 minutes, if you do not have an agenda or you realize the meeting does not concern you, you were free to get up and leave with no consequences.
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"Could have" if only human nature were different than it actually is?
Everything in my experience tells me that the vast majority of people will never mentally process a complex email message. They don't even pretend to. "I told you (in an email)" carries zero weight.
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...people will never mentally process a complex email message.
Your company needs to stop hiring middle school dropouts.
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Everything in my experience tells me that the vast majority of people will never mentally process a complex email message.
Forget about complex. Some people are unable to process more than one idea or question in a single email.
I find that one-sentence paragraphs help. Sometimes.
Next Question: (Score:2)
Is Dropbox hiring software developers right now....
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Unfortunately, this does not work for people doing government work who deal with classified information. That will always and forever require commuting to a secured facility
Many people with security clearances at national laboratories that work on highly classified projects work from home for 2-3 days per week.
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I have done pretty sensitive IT work for a major bank from home. They did require me to sign some things like locking-up the bank laptop when I do no use it and making sure nobody else gets access, but that was it. Friend of mine worked on some military projects where he was required to work in a specific room. Now that is just stupid. The main protection for actual secrets is the mindset of the person working with them. You _cannot_ make things secure by procedure in this space.
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Many people with security clearances at national laboratories that work on highly classified projects work from home for 2-3 days per week.
That works fine if your project assignment has some amount of work that can be done at an unclassified level. If you are fortunate enough to work on a project like that, you can do hybrid.
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Yeah I like quite a few things about going to the office. It's a bit easier to switch between working/relaxing, you can meet people, there's free drinks, lunch options, staff to clean up after you, etc etc. Of course it's also nice to be able to WFH if needed as well.
That said, nothing makes up for horrible commutes. I live within walking distance so it's not an issue, but I don't get how people tolerate spending 40-60 minutes each way. I'd be upset about "return to office too".
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That said, nothing makes up for horrible commutes.
This right here. There are some commutes that you cannot pay me enough to tolerate... because while I consider the elevated salary the money necessary to cover the time wasted while commuting, the employer will look at it as a need to treat you like you're the inventor of sliced bread and expect a higher level of performance/results.
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Yep, I live in suburban Houston. I've driven an hour each way to work for many years. I have no desire to go back to office work, because of that commute.
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Lots of places require a workplace. Lab work, soldering stations, anything with equipment that needs to be shared, etc.
But beyond that, I think some get the work-from-home wrong, it's too easy to fall into the trap that home equals work. Thus the mistaken belief that you must work more than 40 hours a week, which when working from home can easily turn into a 24/7 job. Keeping work and home separated is a very good thing, when at work do work, when at home do not do work. Don't let shit from work life ru
Tell me again why we have these goofballs on top? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell does it take a CEO more than a year to realize something that the janitor knew before the day was over?
What the hell do these useless idiots get their money for?
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Interesting. The goofballs not only read here, they even got modpoints.
Re:Tell me again why we have these goofballs on to (Score:5, Insightful)
Those CEOs knew this years ago. Many of them frequently worked from home long before the rest of us. Many of the companies those same CEOs run have large investments in offices on their balance sheets that they would prefer not to write off as stranded assets with no value.
The only change here is a CEO saying out loud the thing that everyone already knew.
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When you say their balance sheets, I understand that to mean in some cases the personal balance sheets of the board who have personally financed office real estate.
It always sounded dodgy to me, being essentially a supplier to the company you run - the kind of thing HR warn about in the monthly "training" videos.
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When you say their balance sheets, I understand that to mean in some cases the personal balance sheets of the board who have personally financed office real estate.
That's a possibility, but also the company's balance sheets. Writing down the value would negatively affect the company's P&L and since the CEO's compensation is often tied to the company's profits, that would negatively affect the CEO's income.
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That's a possibility, but also the company's balance sheets. Writing down the value would negatively affect the company's P&L and since the CEO's compensation is often tied to the company's profits, that would negatively affect the CEO's income.
Yes. This. When a company invests in building it becomes a fixed asset that is ammortized over a series of years. If leasing office space (usually for multi-years,) it becomes a liability (cost.) Either would reflect poorly on the balance sheet if the business cannot show utilization/value from those investments. As said, it's also possible that a related party owns those properties, but that's a separate issue to the P/L for the business.
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Hey! Those training videos are critical to our mission! Essential, even!
It's an hour you can book on HR while getting some meaningful work done that you can't bill, the video is running just fine in the background. Why do you think we have three screens now?
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So, in other words, they are blatant liars who mislead not only their workers but also their investors.
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Damn. The only thing they do an AI cannot do better.
Maybe we gotta get Boston Dynamics on the case.
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They're paid to look good and impress the shareholders, kind of like a mascot.
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Get a dog, they're cuter AND cheaper.
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They're not (all) as dumb as it sounds to you.
There's a bunch of organizational behaviour research that shows you can motivate employees to work harder by giving some of them nice stuff. Corner office, parking space, cubical by the window, whatever, so long as it's desireable and conspicuous. It turns out that somebody else having nice stuff motivates quite a bit better than higher pay, so it's a very economical method.
Flexible working hours is one of the ultimate nice things. It works great if Bob breezes
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What they just don't get is that their workers don't give a fuck about all that shit. I don't need a corner office, or a fruit basket. If a CEO wants to "motivate" me to work more, he should hang himself. Preferably on live stream during one of the mandatory meetings these useless assholes like so much.
That would certainly up my mood considerably!
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I have actually. If you have an actual point I would be interested in hearing it. Snide remarks, not so much.
As I said, there's a lot of research that indicates that *in the workplace* perks motivate more than higher pay. No, beer in the cube farm kitchen doesn't motivate more than a gun to your head, but that's not really what we're discussing.
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I already wear jeans. I'm not here to play dress-up, I'm here to get shit done.
If I wanted to play dress-up, I'd be in management.
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Maybe it's because you post anonymous.
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Oh yeah, the horrible, horrible consequence of being sent packing with a couple millions.
Could I have that horrible consequence, pretty please? I'll run your company into the ground in return, promised! I also don't mind if the whole board and their dogs hate me. It's only a small step from being totally indifferent towards someone to hate, the "consequence" is insignificantly different.
No, wait, it is. It is a couple million dollars. And frankly, for a few millions, they can hate me all they like.
It's not the office (Score:4, Interesting)
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And the cost savings alone on gasoline and vehicle wear and tear. Daycare for children is another massive cost. Boomers, you might want to sit down before seeing what a month of daycare costs in 2024.
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White women ruined that for us. If they see a young child outside without an adult you are getting a CPS visit.
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The youngest boomers are 60. The average age of a Fortune 500 CEO is 58, and lots of them are in their seventies.
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Boomers are on the way out.
You can see that by how the demographics give corporations the creeps. For every 5 people who retire, only 4 join the workforce.
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Where is the limit? The commute in a recent job was in the region 25-30 minutes each way and the advantages of being on site outweighed the disadvantages by a distance. Then they closed those offices and moved ("consolidated") further away, the distances involved was not that different but at that point driving to work became intolerable.
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Re:It's not the office (Score:5, Insightful)
And remember - this is time considered absolutely necessary for your work yet you are not compensated for the time. In fact you pay for it because you're using your own car and you, not your job, probably pay for the gas (or electricity) you put in it.
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Well, I am a fan of having the option to work remotely, so don't take this as an argument against it, but where you live is your choice, which makes it your responsibility, and you need to factor that in when choose to work for a company, where you have to go to get to that job. We don't need to be coddled too much,. that's like saying 'Well, I have to shower to be clean ant not stinky for work, am I compensated for that? No'. Some of these extra things you need to factor into your compensation per hour you
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In a home office, I don't need to shower.
Well, for the job. I need to shower, yeah, but that's my own enjoyment, not a job requirement.
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Actually it can be. You can be dismissed for poor hygiene, so it's actually a job requirement :)
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I wonder how you'd like to find it out. You think someone would come to your front door and sniff your armpits?
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Haha sorry no, I was meaning if you are required to go into the office. They can let you go for poor hygiene, but my entire post was about the if you have to go to an office, not about if you can work from home.
Someone was talking about how you're not compensated to drive to work and yet it's a thing required for work. My reply to that is so is showering and you're not compensated for that either, nor should we be.
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As soon as companies pay for the way to and from the office, as well as the gas, we can talk about not paying for it during the WFH days.
Because so far, that difference is exactly zero dollars, because they don't pay for it when you go to the office either.
And if you dock the pay for people who WFH, what you'll get is more people quitting and going to companies that are less insane.
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I'm fairly sure that if you try to reduce the pay of people, they'll give you the finger and find something new.
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Even if your commute is a single hour a day, i.e. only 30 minute to, 30 minutes from, what you lose is more than what you work in a whole month, i.e. you are down one MONTH of payment.
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It is more than a month of worktime, indeed. But I don't know how much time you work where you are. In my country, the average monthly work time is about 168 hours a month. But then again, we have about a month of paid vacation, so... It highly depends on where you are, how many hours a day, how many days a week and how many weeks a year you work.
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Most cultures in corporations belong in Petri dishes, that's how toxic they are.
At the very least, they make you puke, at worst, they can kill you.
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It's both the office and the commute. Both are terrible for many of us.
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I live 5 minutes walk time from the office. And you'll find me in the office if you pay me for it.
It's not the way. It is the office.
When 100% remote is not really allowed after all (Score:2)
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Having worked for a company that did indeed hire anywhere there is a huge administrative burden to support those employees as they move. Some countries need business entities in them, states have wildly varying tax codes that must be considered. Having worked at a payroll provider as well these things have actual cost to standup on a country/state by country/state level.
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Tax laws in Europe, at least income tax, usually put a huge emphasis on where you park your cadaver for half the year plus one day. That makes a huge difference since income tax laws are very different between countries here (and generally higher than in the US, most of all, it's common around here that your employer has to pay a considerable portion of the tax owed himself).
So I can see why they're wary of employing someone from abroad (when I was working for a US based company, they required me to open up
Re:It's not the office (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh it's also definitely about the office. While the managers get their private offices, the rest of us are dumped in "open floorplans" to "encourage collaboration". Nobody wants to be stuck listening to Bill loud-talking to his customer on Zoom or smelling Janet's microwaved tuna and garlic lunch.
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How does the maths work? (Score:5, Insightful)
That only pays for my train ticket. It doesn't pay for me driving to the train station, it doesn't pay me for three hours commute a day, it doesn't pay me for exorbitant prices in London to get some food at lunch time.
Now if I work from home, I do more work per hour because I'm not exhausted from the commute, I sometimes work longer because I'm in the flow and don't notice that it is 5 o'clock or because I just want to finish something and don't have to leave to get the train. The employer saves the office space.
So this is a win-win situation for everyone. If you don't count the benefits for the employees, just realise that given the choice between job A where I work from home, and job B where I go to the office every day, even spending 7,000 pound extra money from your annual budget doesn't manage to make your company more attractive.
Re:How does the maths work? (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume London, where modern capitalism was mostly invented, is the same as the USA in that your land owners are heavily invested in expensive downtown office spaces that aren't actually necessary. It's not win-win for them, and whatever banks they owe money to.
This conflict of interest is a huge problem.
In the US, we also have a problem where each state tries to operate as its own very ineffectual and poorly run country, and gives tax breaks to corporations that choose to open offices within it. They give the corporation tax breaks, assuming the corporations attract workers to the area, who will be paying property/sales and (in most cases) state income taxes. This arrangement is why states like Texas and Arizona can attract any people at all. Having workers work remotely undermines this income model, especially wherein the workers who can be remote, tend to be high income earners. I don't know that the UK as a whole has this particular dilemma, but it's built in to US politics.
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The US also has a problem where each corporation tries to operate as an ineffectual and poorly run country. Sometimes their laws are overruled by state or federal law, but whatever made up stupid ideas they have, very little of it is protected against.
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I don't mind the hybrid schedule so much. I'm not sure how I managed for 16 years to commute to the office every day AND go to the gym in the middle of the day for an hour.
That's nice for them (Score:2)
A good chunk of my work, however, actually interfaces with the real world, and not just a keyboard. Zoom won't cut it when a CNC machinist and I are reviewing a complex part together. The finished parts could be shipped to me (with the accompanying delay), but I can't properly assembly thi
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Thank you. As some on here are wont to say, not everyone learns at the same pace. In a similar fashion, not everyone can sit on their ass and do their job from home. If people would take more than three seconds and not have a knee jerk reaction every time this subject comes up, they'd understand the vast amount of people who need to be in the office (for larg
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Which is why I said for large definitions of office. I also mentioned IT because myself, my team, and members of other teams, are in the office every day doing our work because it can't be done from home.
Since we're told English is a fluid language and changes over time, here's another one. Office is no longer only for white collar workers. It's wherever you do your job regardless of what you do.
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Yes, there are jobs that cannot be done in a WFH environment.
That doesn't mean that those that can shouldn't.
Back to Office = desire to reduce workforce (Score:4, Interesting)
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In the most idiotic way possible, too.
Who will quit? And who will bite the bullet because he cannot? The go-getter with a ton of projects under his belts he can show off and is instantly gobbled up by a company if he puts his resume out on LinkedIn? Or the dud that has been here for 20 years, stopped acquiring new skills 19.5 years ago and it working minimum effort to not get fired?
no office perk beats long commutes (Score:3)
It really came down to that. You can make the perks be as nice as you want, but if I lose a hours a day just sitting in my car to get there, that's an hour I could be doing anything else...including my work for the company.
A consistently bad commute kills morale and reduces productivity. After a year at home, most tech and creatives realized that. While the initial loneliness was depressing, too, it was more easily adapted to as zoom and slack picked up, as well as doing remote work at public wifi spots like restaurants, coffeeshops, etc.
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Exactly. Personally, when I teach students I do not mind the commute. It is by train/tram and on the way there I can prepare the lecure. On the way back, I am wiped out anyways. But for meetings? Occasionally in person, but the rese online. I absolutely refuse to just work in an office, it makes zero sense to do so to me and I will not take any job that requires it.
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My team is geographically disparate in locations where we have offices. So working in office is just working remote with a commute.
Such a surprise (Score:2)
It is really easy: In the future, there will be inflexible companies and flexible ones. The latter will allow full work-from-home and in return get better productivity, lower cost and access to better employees. Guess which ones will have more success.
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Next we could have employee owned companies, but that would be a much bigger shift away from this infinite growth strategy system where everyone seems to be ignoring the elephant in the room.
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We're heading into a huge demographics shift. Take a look at the age pyramids of countries and pay close attention to the 20-25 age bracket and the 60-65 age bracket. You will notice that the former is smaller than the latter. For the first time in history, too. We used to have more people joining the workforce than leaving. Until about, well, now. Most countries in Europe face the problem that every year only 4 people join the workforce for every 5 that retire. Every year, only 80% of the people retiring g
Recent surveys said most prefered hybrid work (Score:2)
I was happy to see that, because that was always my conclusion. I've worked entirely remote, entirely at an office, and in hybrid arrangements. Hybrid just makes the most sense to me -- and it's something I did at one employer years before COVID.
I think if people are honest? They like at least 1-3 days a week they can work from home, vs coming in all the time; not only to eliminate the commute, but to be able to handle little things at home that need to get done. (EG. Amazon is dropping off an expensive box
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I wasn't a fan of complete remote work because you feel a little detached from the company you work for.
I fail to see the problem.
I have a contract with a company. I provide work, they provide money. It's not a relationship.
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That's a weird/negative take on things. My actual point is that people are social creatures and we're generally far better about communicating what we need in a personal conversation at work, vs having to write it out in an email or typing it up in a Teams chat....
The fully remote team of infrastructure engineers I interact with regularly at my workplace is a great example. When I first started working for this company, they would pop in the office at least once a week for various tasks or a meeting. It wa
Work from home saves me around $6k a year (Score:3)
That's money the employer has to pay me so I can survive and function as an employee. I can probably cut that in half by drastically reducing my quality of life (beater car breaking down all the time, paying for cab rides into work when it does, extra roommates, etc) but you're still talking $8-$10k a year that goes out of my pocket and that I either have to have or I can't do the job (kinda hard when you're living out of your car that breaks down all the time).
That said the value of commercial real estate is so massive it dwarfs those costs. Not just the office buildings, think of all the restaurants you frequent on lunch breaks or because your commute exhausts you too much to cook. Or stopping off to shop somewhere on the way home. Or hell the profits from replacing your car every 10 years instead of every 20.
CEOs own stock in all those companies and make cash off their dividends, stock buy backs, etc. And if you think they aren't considering the value of their multi million (sometimes multi-billion) dollar portfolios I don't know what world you live in but I'd like to live there...
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It saves you more.
I don't know what your commute is per day, but let's assume it takes you 45 minutes to get to work (including getting ready, dressed, check your windows for being closed and so on) and 45 minutes to get back home. 90 minutes a day. 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. That is 375 hours per year.
A standard work month at 38.5 hours is on average 168 hours a month. In other words, you invest 2 months of unpaid labor into your commute.
I don't know about you, but I can actually sell my time. That wo
Really, who wouldn't? (Score:2)
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Generally speaking, if the quality of the job that needs to be done is independent of the location it is done in, WFH generally produces better results. YMMV, of course, but that's the general direction.